


Faireach Anail 'The Watchful Breath'

by Thevina



Category: Secret of Kells (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:06:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thevina/pseuds/Thevina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendan wasn't the only human who shaped how Aisling viewed her role as protector of her realm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faireach Anail 'The Watchful Breath'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [finnglas (mjules)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/gifts).



> To my dear Yuletide requester: I can't tell you how thrilled beyond words I was to be paired with you. I've been trying to write a Secret of Kells Yuletide story for three years now and this year was the one I was paired with someone requesting it. I share your fondness for the enigmatic Aisling, and hope you enjoy this story.

Faireach Anail

_The Watchful Breath_   


In her winter dreams, she soared. From her aerie, the tallest oak in her forest, she glided above the hushed woodlands, silent under its snowy blanket. She’d escaped the pull of stone, the slicing blade that separated life from death. She’d been forced to that maw once, and yet now, she rose high above, on featherless wings.

Aisling flew, a greenly spirit unbound.

* * * * *

Spring brought her a visitor. Aisling had been absorbed in the droning throng of bees, recently set to task by their queen, when she heard the unmistakable sound of a child’s high laughter. Intrigued, but loath to leave the mesmerizing activity at the hive, she waited. Another laugh bounded up to the tree branches. Now keenly interested, as no humans had been this far into her forest for quite some time, Aisling shimmied silently to a vantage point several feet above ground. It was a girl, delightedly chattering to herself and hopping after a hare. Aisling smiled to herself, but then her brows furrowed. There was a settlement off to the southwest, but the people rarely ventured into the woods more than was necessary to find boar or deer. This youngling had come quite the distance, obviously entranced by the hare. It had been a long winter. Even Aisling had felt it as she held her beloved elms, the heartbeat of their sap so, so still.

Aisling kept an eye on the child, who’d found a clearing with the earliest spring flowers poking up from bracken and a fallen tree trunk. Aisling kept her distance, half watching a sparrow tend its bower and keeping some attentions on her new interloper. The girl played and played, entertaining herself with the treasures provided on the forest floor. 

The days were longer now, but once the sun took its leave, dark settled swiftly. Belatedly, the girl looked around for a path, and realizing she was alone, and lost, she also appeared to recognize that she was frightened. She began to cry.

Aisling watched, dispassionate. Creatures of all types experienced fear, hunger, death and birth in her woodlands. Even her own people— _No, mustn’t think on that, that was such a long, long time ago…_

The girlchild wailed, balling her skinny hands in her rough wool garment. Overcome with memories, Aisling bounded away, soundless. The ancient screams as her favorite cousin was murdered for Crom Crúach assaulted her until she sat, covering her ears with her hands.

“You’re powerless!” she gasped at the sacrificial power through clenched teeth. Its stones were far away in a part of her woods she refused to visit. “Nobody feeds you now. You can’t hurt me. You can’t hurt… us.”

She remembered being hungry and cold. Her family had taken care of sheep and cows, but famine had visited more than once in her few human years. She’d seen a mouse carcass, but decided instead to get berries and mushrooms for her visitor. _Yes,_ she decided. _I’ll go bring those. And a piece of honeycomb._

The youngling’s crying had diminished to gulped, syrupy sobs and sniffled, but the lone human was easy enough for Aisling to find. She waited until the girl decided to sit down and hang her head, her matted hair forming a curtain in front of her face. Aisling swiftly made a presentation of her offering, near the girl but not so close as to frighten her. Aisling became a pine marten and flowed up a tree to better observe her guest. Eventually the girl looked around again, wiping her nose on a sleeve. When her eyes glanced upon the food, presented neatly on a pile of leaves, her eyes grew wide.

She stood up and hurried over, grabbing the berries and shoving them into her mouth, furtively glancing left and right as though someone else might try to steal her bounty. Once the food was gone, she began to cry, though now the sound was tinged with despair, not hunger. Aisling hadn’t seen or heard any other humans, and knew it would be quite cold through the night. When the girl curled up at the foot of her tree, Aisling kept the form of a pine marten and slowly approached her.

“You’re pretty,” the girl said. She welcomed Aisling into her lap, and Aisling allowed herself to be held with sticky hands until the girl fell asleep.

In the morning, the girl woke up alone, frightened, cold, stiff and very hungry. She began crying again, especially because her furry friend was gone. Aisling had made a stone path of sorts to guide the girl back to the settlement that lay on the outskirts of the woods. She returned to her pine marten form, and after a short reunion, encouraged the girlchild to follow her along the path. When they were near enough to the settlement, Aisling dashed away, and the girl started to cry again. This time, a dog barked in response. Human voices joined in, and from her perch, Aisling saw a woman run toward the forest.

To her surprise and delight, Aisling saw the girl again, later in the spring. How such a young creature found her way back to the clearing, Aisling was quite uncertain. Still, she was so happy at her return that when a butterfly distracted the child, Aisling brought more gifts of berries and honeycomb. The girl’s brown eyes lit up when she saw the tidy offering on its leaf bed.

“Good spirit!” she exalted, animatedly looking around, obviously hoping to see whatever had brought her more treasures. Caught up in the girl’s happiness, Aisling again took the form of a pine marten and came across the clearing.

“Pretty!” the girl cooed.

Aisling let herself be petted, then curled up to watch as the child began looking around industriously for something. She busied herself with a project Aisling couldn’t fathom. With sun on her warm fur coat, she found herself drifting off to sleep. When she awoke, the girl was gone. A crude altar was near the tree, the brush cleared away and an organized set of stones and small branches fashioning a shelter over it. On the surface, she’d placed a clump of sheep’s wool, a broken bit of brown potshard, and a braided grass crown with honeysuckle. Aisling picked up each item in turn, smelling them and then returning them with reverence back in their carefully placed alignment. It pleased her that the youngling was grateful. Smiling, she noted the location, and then went off to see how the brown bear cubs she’d seen far on the northern outskirts of her realm were faring.

It took a few turns of the seasons for Aisling to realize that the girl kept returning to that particular grove. Return she did, on days whose pull to celebration and commemoration beat a timeless tattoo in Aisling’s heart as well. The solstices and equinoxes once again became days to which Aisling looked forward. She hid in the canopy above the small shrine, watching as the girl came and tended to the alter, cleaning away encroaching foliage and sometimes adding new treasures: a raven’s feather, a shiny rock with tiny flecks of gold. At each visit, the girl looked around expectantly, but in seeing no-one and nothing, she uttered thanks to the wood-sprite who’d taken care of her, vowing to return until she died and asking for safety and good hunting for herself and her family.

The years continued on. Sometimes Aisling took on her pine marten form, allowing herself to be picked up and held by the girl.

“So pretty!” the girl would say, her smile revealing crooked and broken teeth, delight in her expression. “So warm!”

The seasons flowed by. In Aisling’s forest, timeless cycles turned and turned anew. Then came a midsummer when the girl approached, a young man with her, holding her hand. Suddenly alert and mistrustful, Aisling perched on a branch a short ways up from the altar, ready to call on the bees if necessary.

“Wood spirit!” the girl called out, clasping the hand of her companion. “This is Caol. We’re joining together, in this, my sacred space. I hope you’re here.”

Intrigued, Aisling watched from her vantage point. Her people had had ceremonies binding people together, but she’d been young, so young then. Now she and the forest were bound as one. Still, she was infinitely curious, and watched to see what the girl would do.

She chatted to the young man, and they tended the shrine together. Then they sat on the bed of leaves, spoke vows to one another, and intertwined themselves fully in body. Aisling ventured away during that episode as it seemed improper to watch. When they were clothed again, Aisling regarded the pair, their joy apparent in the wordless way of a tender shoot basking in sunlight. She decided to leave a gift of her own when they came at midwinter.

It wasn’t until the beginning of winter, once the trees were bare and Aisling felt she could put it off no longer, that she ventured near the stones where Crom’s pall shrouded the forest in a hush of dread. As a young human girl, she’d lived nearby, in a time so long ago. Being ageless hadn’t lessened her abhorrence of this place, but for the young woman who now held her in such vaulted esteem, Aisling forced herself to the outskirts of this shrine of awe and terror.

“I know I was wearing it that day,” she choked out to herself, scrabbling through dirt and gravel at the far end of the walkway. The monoliths threatened her; stony, menacing guards that even now, abandoned for ages, turned her hands brittle and her face ashen.

“Come to me!” she begged of the earth. “I can’t stay here long. It still wants me, but it can’t— ah!”

She shrieked in triumph, a crude bronze band in her palm. Snatching it up, she fled from that place, hiding away in her favorite winter enclave, a small grove by a stream in the southern reaches of her realm. For days she cleaned it, readying it for the sapling girl now grown a young woman. The morning of midwinter, Aisling wrapped her present in leaves of ivy, placing it on top of the usual forest detritus that accumulated in the months between the girl’s visits.

To Aisling’s joy, the girl came alone, and fell to her knees when she saw the new offering. Reverently she pulled away the ivy to reveal the band, gasping as she did. The young woman drew an X shape on her breastbone, a symbol of protection Aisling remembered from her own people.

“I…” the woman faltered. “But you’re real! How can that be? How is this?”

Aisling rolled her eyes at that, and almost called out,” Of course I’m real! This is my forest you’re in, after all,” but decided that might scare her off. The truth was, she’d grown quite fond of her regular visitor, and as long as she didn’t harm any of her forest creatures, she was encouraged to return.

The young woman didn’t suffer being over nourished, and the band slid over her twig-like fingers and settled at her wrist.

“Thank you, my protector,” she said into the hush of the grove.

“You’re welcome,” Aisling replied in the sussuration of dead leaves.

Seasons flowed to years, blossomed to decades, sang into a chorus of constellations of ages. A band of humans took to clearing out a section in her forest. Aisling watched for a long time, ready to retaliate should they abuse the privilege of being in her realm. Seeing as how they built strong walls first and foremost, and rarely ventured from their keep, her interaction with them was nonexistent.

That said, Aisling decided to try on a new form. Should these new interlopers, or even those who came after, prove destructive, she would need to get her point across. She began studying her wolves.

They were social, territorial, and in the case of the cubs, a source of unending hours of entertainment. One day Aisling willed herself into lupine form, and padded around her forest, smelling it with heightened ability. She roamed alone for a time. As soon as she approached the pack, to her surprise, she wasn’t challenged for supremacy.

_Maybe wolves see more clearly than humans,_ Aisling thought, and she sat proudly on her haunches.

She ran as a wolf more often than not for a spell of a season. Once, when she was drinking from a small lake, she chanced to see her reflection. Her eyes grew wide as she stared, droplets falling from her muzzle.

_A white wolf!_ she marveled delightedly. The rest of her pack was dark-colored, and she’d assumed she looked just like them. How fitting that she stood out, the lone champion for her realm. Back in her human guise, she combed through her white hair with her hands, perched high up in an elm, singing to herself.

The enclosed village became a place of wonder, even from her distanced vantage. Their ability to build and farm far surpassed what her own people had done, though that was so, so long ago. Aisling liked these humans because they left her alone.

That is, until they sent a ginger haired youngling into her forest. He wasn’t a babe like her first guest, though he wasn’t close to full-grown, either. She ensured she’d made an unforgettable first impression as a wolf before interrogating him about his business.

Sitting in the top of an oak tree, watching bemusedly as Brendan (for she’d found out her guest’s name this time) plucked his hard-won gall berries, Aisling couldn’t have guessed that this delightful boychild would very nearly bring about her demise.

Later, after Brendan, dear Pangur Bán and its human had fled her forest, she let her thoughts return to happier times with the fervent boy. Despite the terrors she’d felt as she helped Brendan to what she’d assumed was certain death, she’d believed in his tales of his book of light. Perhaps it was that belief, and her own impetuousness, that prompted her to leave flowers at the fallen statues, in case he did re-emerge from the blackness. As the seasons journeyed on, Aisling took heart in hearing the settlers sing their songs once more. The men of blood and fire had wrought destruction, though they’d left her woodlands untouched; she disliked them solely because they’d threatened Brendan and his companions.

It was best, she decided, never to show herself so clearly again.

Brendan was very old when she saw him for the last time. He used a walking stick. Weariness shrouded him though his eyes were still bright. He slowly shuffled to the rock where Aisling had first revealed herself and he rested against it, his bony hands crossed atop his staff.

“Hello, Aisling,” he said, a smile creasing his face. “It’s been a long time. I’ll be going to join my uncle and Brother Aiden very soon, I believe. I wanted to come and say goodbye.”

Saddened, but grateful, Aisling took on her wolf form, and watched him from a distance, hidden in the shadows.

“You assisted me in more ways than you may have realized,” he said in a rough voice before clearing his throat. “Without you I could never have found those berries, or faced Crom.”

In a jerky motion, he raised an arm to his left ear and fidgeted with the small bit of bronze Aisling now remembered him having when he was much younger.

“I didn’t know my mother. She died when I was very young. But she fastened this on me, as a talisman or protection. I won’t need it anymore. And I know you don’t need protecting.”

He chuckled, a dry, raspy sound with an undercurrent of warmth so compelling that Aisling couldn’t help but approach him. She sat on her haunches, gazing at him.

“Ah, there you are! Somehow I knew you’d be here. You’ve always been here, or close enough.”

Shakily, Brendan clutched at his staff and lowered down so that he could place the small ear clasp on the ground.

“A small token of thanks,” he said, catching his breath once he’d returned to his upright stance. “I don’t know what you’d do with it, but it seemed the right thing to do. Good bye, Aisling.”

Brendan’s broad smile creased his already wrinkled face. Aisling padded over, and nuzzled at his knees before sitting next to the bit of metal. She stayed there a long time, far longer than it took him to leave the small clearing. Returning to her usual form, she picked up the small clasp and turned it over a few times. A shock of recognition caused her to sway.

“It can’t be,” she breathed, even though she knew unmistakably that what she held was, somehow, a part of the bracelet she’d given another human, ages long past. How it had wended its way through time to him she couldn’t fathom, but the metal sang against her skin.

“Thank you, Brendan,” she said into the quiet air. “I’ll never forget you.”

After Brother Brendan’s death, every year at midsummer a small, leaf-wrapped packet of gall berries appeared on the ground at his unmarked cross. Initially suspicious, the people of Kells grew to cherish and revere this small act they couldn’t explain. Eventually the monks decided it was a miraculous act by Brendan himself. Though he was never made a saint, they continued his legacy at the scriptorium.

After a third brutal Viking attack, a child assumed dead returned to Kells with a story of a white wolf with bronze in its ear. This was chalked up to the imagination and delusion the child must have suffered while spending a terrified night alone in the forest. However, the child never forgot what he saw, and when he chose the life of a monk, his illustrations featured a wolf with kindly eyes.

Aisling, protectress of her forest, journeyed into the fullness of time, her name spoken in dappled shadows, and made manifest on silent paws.


End file.
